


First Impressions

by Lenny9987



Series: Lenny's Imagine Claire and Jamie Prompts [15]
Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-23 21:19:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7480485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenny9987/pseuds/Lenny9987
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Jamie's POV when meeting Claire for the first time</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Impressions

Jamie could feel his pulse pounding in his arm, each beat sending a shock of pain through the limb. He needed distraction and the debate over what should be done to get his arm back into joint wasn’t working.

Then Murtagh burst through the door leading a woman.

Jamie’s view of her was partially blocked but with her attention focused on Dougal, he could stare at her openly. It was dim but he could see she was disheveled and wearing naught but her shift—she must be cold. Her hair was a wild dark mass around her head—black perhaps. Her eyes seemed dark too but there was something about them… they weren’t afraid but rather defiant—not something he would have expected from someone her size facing off against Dougal MacKenzie. He smiled as she snapped back at his uncle—she was an Englishwoman.

But the attention of the room turned back to him and he became aware of the throbbing in his arm again.

“I couldna handle a horse,” he confessed to his uncle, much as he dreaded the prospect of any of them forcing his arm back.

Before anyone could lay a finger on him, the woman called to them to stop.

“You’ll break his arm if you do it like that,” she warned, stepping forward and crouching before him to examine his arm closer. Now that she was in the firelight, he could see that her hair wasn’t black but brown shot through with lighter streaks that disappeared into the twisting curls; her eyes were the color of whiskey… He could really use another dram before she began whatever it was she had in mind.

“This’ll be the worst part,” she warned him taking a firm hold of his hand in one of hers and his elbow in the other.

She waited looking into his eyes… and he felt calm; even with the pain shooting through his arm, he felt calm… steady.

He nodded and she gave the briefest of nods herself before moving quickly and with surprising force.

It _hurt_ and he couldn’t help gasping. And then the pain was gone.

“A dhia!” he exclaimed before looking back to the woman—what had they said her name was? Claire, that was it. Claire Beauchamp.

 _Claire_ … such a fitting name for the woman who made his pain vanish so easily.

She was already tossing out orders to the rest of the men, procuring a belt and strapping his arm in place—giving _him_ orders about how to care for his injury in the days ahead. From the look on Dougal’s face, she wasn’t going anywhere but with them.

The thought made Jamie bristle even as his heart soared. He didn’t like the look in his uncle’s face but the idea of Claire caring for his arm in the days ahead—her touch, gentle but firm in those brief moments of contact…

“Thank ye,” he managed to say as it became clear it was time to go.


End file.
